Improving Your Egg Quality For Pregnancy Success | with Natalie Pickering

Egg quality is an incredibly important factor in your fertility journey. It plays a crucial role in a woman's fertility so it’s really important that you understand the importance of it and what you can do to improve your egg quality.

Women are born with all their eggs, in fact as we develop in-utero females have around 6 million eggs. That number decreases to around 1 million at birth, then at puberty to around 300,000 eggs.

The number of eggs continues to decline as we get older and particularly once we reach about 30 years old to somewhere around 100,000...

But....that’s just QUANTITY!

Yes, its biologically inevitable that the number of eggs we have available will get lower and lower, but that doesn't mean we need to expect or accept the same for egg quality.

Your egg quality refers to the eggs capacity to mature well, to be fertilised, then to develop into an embryo and ultimately become a healthy full-term pregnancy.

Why Is Important To Have Good Egg Quality?

Low egg quality tends to mean a lower level of maturity, lower rates of successful fertilisation and lower likelihood of progression to day 3 and onward to development of blastocyst.

Low quality eggs are called aneuploid eggs. If conception occurs with an aneuploid egg, the embryo that forms will have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Aneuploidy can lead to genetic imbalances that can cause various health problems, including developmental abnormalities.

Aneuploidy affects ∼10–25% of eggs in women in their early 30s and more than 50% in women over 40. Aneuploidy is also a leading cause of pregnancy loss and birth defects.

A lower quality egg will often be more fragile and its shell is harder, making fertilisation less successful. A poor quality egg may also have a higher or lower number of chromosomes than a normal egg. It is more likely to accumulate errors in its DNA during that division process, leading to genetically abnormal eggs.

Since DNA is like an instruction manual for our cells, any damage to your DNA can prevent that cell from doing what it’s supposed to do—which, in the case of the egg, is make a healthy baby. Once an egg cell’s DNA is degraded, the DNA must be repaired to restore genetic integrity and be able to function normally.

This DNA repair can only happen with the optimal combination of a fertility friendly diet, a fertility friendly lifestyle and environment, and the correctly chosen supplements.

Can You Test For Egg Quality?

There is no one accurate way to test for egg quality, rather it is a series of signs and symptoms and often IVF cycle results that suggest egg quality needs attention. Your AMH level is not an indicator of the quality of your eggs.

Signs And Symptoms Of Low Egg Quality:

Can You Improve Egg Quality?

Immature follicles in the ovaries are activated to start growing in a process called folliculogenesis, this process takes 16-24 weeks. The egg follicle undergoes changes to be ready to release a mature egg from the follicle when it is recruited for ovulation.

Optimising egg quality ideally needs to begin 4-6 months before ovulation to assist at every level of folliculogenesis. During this time attention needs to be paid to the factors known to impact egg quality.

With the right plan and support you absolutely CAN improve egg quality; I've seen it time and time again. Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple matter of taking a strong dose of Ubiquinol.

Factors That Can Reduce Egg Quality:

Do you need help with navigating low egg quality?

If you need someone to support you on your fertility journey, book a consult with Natalie here, and she can help you find what is preventing you from conceiving.